Tuesday, 23 June 2015

Strengths (!!!) where do they come from?

I have dear ones around me, who push me to do things which
are good for me. And normally such “pushes” take place in the morning, after some of physical chores are done.

And today the “furmaish” was to think about my
strengths and their origin. (The paraphrasing is totally mine.)

I come from traditional school of thought, when it relates to
development. And that means I believe one must work to overcome one’s
weaknesses to achieve superior performance. The current line, of course is the
opposite. And I do not have any quarrels with these psychologists as well.

The current school feels, “Success
lies in your ability to discover your strengths and to organize your life so
that these strengths can be applied. If we manage
our weaknesses, instead of focusing
on them (notice the verbs), we will be able to build our strengths.”

Strength is grounded in positive psychology
perspective – focusing on what is positive and normal behavior, rather than
focusing on deficiencies or what is abnormal behavior.

Strengths are produced
when talents are refined with knowledge and skill. To develop strength in any
activity requires certain natural talents.

We can build strength by
identifying our dominant talents and refining them with knowledge and skills. There
are three ingredients of strengths:

Talent – innate,
we are born with it, a naturally recurring patter of thoughts, feelings or
behaviors (we see talent all the time – e.g. India Idol, India Has got Talent)

Knowledge – book
learning and practice – we can understand it and talk about it

Skills – learning
and practice – we can develop it

What do
strengths feel like?

When you do it, you feel effective. Before you do it, you
actively look forward to it. While you are doing it, you feel inquisitive and
focused. After you’ve done it, you feel fulfilled and authentic.

Gallup’s (I
am sure all of us have heard the name and hence not being introduced)
psychologists, researched the “best of the best” and identified more than 420
themes of talent in studying more than 2 million individuals. They then
conducted focus group discussions with people who were the best at what they
did and found 34 strengths which were the most prevalent in the “best of the
best”. Their "StrengthsFinder 2.0" is a psychometric profiling tool which is
used for identifying one’s strengths and arranging them in an order of mostly
used themes.

And
psychologists in our group after a long struggle, persuaded me to take this test
some time back. I feel what any such test does is, it asks “you how do you feel?”
and when you respond “good”, tells you “you are feeling good”.

I am hundred
percent in favor of these lines of assessment, since these tests make you think
and provide you with lot to introspect and improve.

They not
only provided me with a report but also coached me in using these areas of my
talent and strengths. Now, whether I am using them or not, only these coaches
can say. They described my strengths as under:

Learner: has
a great desire to learn and wants to continuously improve. In particular, the
process of learning, rather than the outcome, excites.

Achiever: has
a great deal of stamina and works hard, takes great satisfaction from being busy
and productive.

Harmony: looks
for consensus, doesn’t enjoy conflict; rather, seeks areas of agreement. (and
my coach had a hard time convincing me that this is my area of strength for obvious reasons and you all would agree with me)

Input: has a
craving to know more. Often likes to collect and archive all kinds of information.

Responsibility:
takes psychological ownership of what he says and does, committed to stable
values such as honesty and loyalty.

Now this is not my claim, I have just reproduced what
Gallup’s report says. If any one disagrees, I have no issues with them.

Natural and logical extension of this analysis was to look
for sources of these talents themes and strengths. The answer is in the definition of talent
itself. I am borne with these and hence have got it from Papa and Ma and can
not take credit for acquisition. I tried to relate.

I will identify the sources of my strengths in the next
part, till then comments are welcome as usual.